Nuptial Meaning of the Body

This communion of persons in marriage is expressed in and through their male and female bodies and sexuality. This is the purpose for which God created us as embodied and sexual beings. As human beings, we are made up of body and soul. The human person is both body and soul. How do you show that you are happy? By smiling or laughing, isn't it? How do you show that you sad, or that you are angry? You express these very personal emotions or feelings by means of your bodily expressions or gestures, isn't it? A more basic question: how do we ever relate with each other, communicate with each other, for instance? How do we show to others who we truly are and what we truly feel? How do we reveal our inner selves to them? By means of our bodily actions and gestures, isn't it?

In other words, the body is an expression of the human person. Thus, it partakes of the dignity of the human person. If you cannot just use a person for your selfish ends, then certainly you cannot just use the body of the person for your mere sexual gratification, for example. If you respect the person, you must also respect his or her body. In the words of St. Paul, you "must hold it in holiness and honor."

Therefore, in marriage, the sexual act or the marital act, is meant to express the total and reciprocal self-giving and reciprocal acceptance of the spouses in love, and should not be an act which for the spouses is simply a way of obtaining sexual gratification. Sexual intercourse is meant to express in a bodily and sexual way their reciprocal self-giving and acceptance of each other in love. This is what sex has been intended by God to be.

The sexual act between the spouses must foster and deepen their love and communion, and must not be a means for one or both of them simply for using one another for their selfish gratification. If you really love your spouse, how can you even think of reducing him or her to a thing that you simply use for your self-centered pleasure? If you really love your spouses, how can you use him or her simply as a sexual object?

By the way, those who get married always use the word "nuptial," as in "You invited to the Nuptials of so and so..." Now, you know what that word "nuptial" means. Now you know what the nuptial meaning of your body is all about: it is your body's capacity for expressing true love, the love in which you freely and totally give yourself as a gift to the other in true love. By the way, young people today often confuse true love with lust. It is therefore very important that they should reflect on what true love really is. If you want to know what true really is, then the one who showed us the real face of love is no other than our Lord Jesus Christ, who loved us so much that he gave himself that we might live and live abundantly.